From jungle tripping to angry farmers – Mossman Gorge and Innisfail

A couple days back by now, I went on a trip to Mossman Gorge, which  is a nice rainforest national-park near Port Douglas. Josie and Simon already told me that the bridge to the main part of the area was broken (which is the only acces road), but they also told me to go anyways since it would still be nice to visit. Unfortunately, the part before the bridge was very dissapointing: tons of tourists and hardly anything to see.

 Luckily, it’s dry season right now, and the river is very low. Not wanting to go back after having cycled for an hour to get there, I crossed the river by just walking through it (didn’t get eaten by a croc – yay!). After that it was truly amazing; there were all kinds of crazy stuff: All kinds of butterflies, huge birds, mushrooms in every colour of the rainbow, absurdly large trees, plants/trees with very strange looking purple leafs and more weird stuff like that. 

Strange purple leafs, very strange to just see hanging around

Seriously huge, but also just really strangely shaped trees

Unswimmable unfortunately; as there's a fair chance to get eaten if you do..

Not only was this part of the forest much more nice than the other part, also I was the only one there. I haven’t seen a single person in the 3 hours that I walked around there, which was very strange since a little earlier it was packed with peope. Thinking back on how easy it actually was to cross the river, I’m surprised nobody else did it. 

The bridge over the river, as can see the water was ridiculously low

 After that, I didn’t really do much anymore in Port Douglas. It’s only a small town, and there’s not actually a whole lot to do. They dó however have a 4-mile beach (which they’re very proud of, I think that in The Netherlands we have tons of beaches stretching that long or longer?) and the good weather to enjoy it. Not a surprise I spend two full days chilling out there..

All that’s been a couple days ago by now though – and right now I’m in a place called Innisfail. I read in my beloved travel-guidebook that there are some cool national parks in the area here, which there are. Too bad karma’s a bitch and my not-planning things backfired this time: you need a car to get anywhere, there are simply no buses or trains going.. Despite being kinda stuck and not able what I wanted to do, Innisfail itself isn’t all bad though;

The Innisfail esplanade

One of the many hills around Innisfail - not very spectacular but pretty nice to walk through

 

  

Since I wasn’t gonna go anywhere I decided to just walk around Innisfail for a bit, when I saw a wild kangaroo in the field. Excited as I was I followed it into the field, whereafter it ran away real quick. The fields were verry pretty though so I kinda kept walking through them. That is, until a farmer threatened to shoot me if I didn’t  get my “fucking cunt ass” of his property. He even kept yelling and threatening me as I was not getting off his land fast enough for his taste. Safe to say my lesson’s learnt.

But, I DID see some wild kangaroos! Too bad my phonecamera doesn't zoom..

Diving at the Great Barrier Reef and the first day of Port Douglas!

The last few days I’ve been doing my diving course, which was truly amazing. Diving is just unbelievably cool. At first the idea seemed kinda scary (after all, you breathe through a tube deep under water); but it’s a bit like an extreme rollercoaster: The first time I was quite nervous but after that I just wanted to go again straight away. The Great Barrier Reef is really beautiful, though it’s not even really the coral that’s all that exciting. 

The boat left... Rather early. Thank god for coffee.

A real surprise, for me anyways, is how much life there’s actually going on at the bottom of the ocean. When we were doing some exercises while sitting at the bottom, there were some fish that just came looking at the bubbles we were blowing out, there was a huge turtle we followed around for a while and just enormous schools of fish (more than 200 fish in them at least) all over the place. There were even sharks swimming in the area, although unfortunately I didn’t see any for myself (sharks sound scary, but they only eat fish of about 10cm large, apparently humans are just not on the menu). What we did see, though from the boat and not underwater, were whales! All together, there actually seems to be a lot more animal life going on at sea than there is on land. 

Some people throwing fish food in the sea, as to show how many there actually are

  

After 2 weeks of Cairns I’ve pretty much seen most things there though, and today I made the trip to Port Douglas! Josie, a woman I met at the hostel where I was staying in Cairns, offered me to couchsurf at her and Simons place for a couple days! Really, really cool. They’re both very chill people and I’m pretty sure the next couple days are going to be really great. 

Sunset at the pier

As for Port Douglas itself: It’s like a little paradise. I went into the city to explore for a bit, and walked around on the pier for a little bit when I got talking with an older woman, who asked me whether I liked fishing. As I’ve never fished before I told her so, and she asked me if I’d like to try. Basically we spent the next hour fishing together and we actually caught four fish!

Sue and me after some succesful fishing :)

Cairns, Kuranda, and Green Island

 First of all: Cairns is cool. It’s a real backpackers city, with a very relaxed laid-back vibe to it. Though I’ve met some pretty cool people before I got to Cairns, this is really the place where  Just like in Brisbane; there’s a sort of beach in the city (only here they call it the lagoon) which is usually pretty busy but the two times I was there there were still some spots left. The weather forecast turns out to be complete shit; meaning that the weather is actually really great here and there’s hardly any rain or clouds at all. A little bit outside of the city there’s also a “real” beach, which was a bit nicer. It’s called Trinity beach and what I liked most about it is that it’s purely visited by locals; there’s not that touristic feeling of Sydney and Cairns.

An amazing beach, almost entirely all to myself

Aside from lying on the beach I really did do some other things though.. Last Wednesday I went to Kuranda, which is a little town in the rainforest. The town itself was, just like Katoomba, slightly dissapointing. This time mostly because it was so clearly flooded with tourists however, not because it looked like a ghost town. There were some really nice things to see there though, like the waterfall that runs down one of the mountaints: 

A much advertised waterfall, of which I don't remember the name

Probably the nicest thing about it was a trip on a riverboat there. The boat was manned by just one guy who had an incredible amount of knowledge about the local wildlife and plantlife, which he really seemed to love to share with us. It’s pretty cool to know a little bit more about the place you visit, and it wasn’t until then that I realized that it’s actually pretty hard to get to know more about the wild- and plantlife: mostly there are just trips to nice sights and people trying to sell you tachy souvenirs. 

On the riverboat :)

As for today; I went to Green Island. Green Island is an island that lies in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef, but here’s what makes it special from the (numerous) other islands out here: there’s a rainforest on it. It’s verry surrealistic to walk around on an island you can cross in half an hour, but that has a rainforest. As it lies in the middle of the great barrier reef, there was also plenty opportunity to snorkel around for a little bit. Though it was probably not even nearly as exciting as diving is going to be, it was pretty cool. Followed around this huge turtle for a while, and that was when I got kinda sad that I didn’t have an underwater camera..

Tomorrow diving at the great barrier reef, and as some may have seen on facebook already: a girl from the hostel gave me a free diving course! Too bad I already signed up for a introductory dive (basically diving with an instructor, but not getting your certificate or anything), but still really a great gift! Usually it costs around 500$ to get your diver’s certificate in Australia (heard it’s cheaper in other countries, but yeah I’m simply not there), but what’s also cool is that it includes 4 extra dives at the great barrier reef! But more about the great barrier reef once I’ve actually dived there..

Brisbane and Traintimes

I think I mentioned earlier that I was going to make my way up to Cairns, and last Thursday I started this crazy long journey. For all the people that complain about the NS: Australian trains, though very comfortable, are ridiculously slow. Looking through the window I’ve seen numerous TRUCKS pass us by, and the maximum speed for the Australian highway is only 100 km/h. In total the whole trainride to Cairns takes about 44 hours, and going from Middelburg to Borne and vice versa seems like a walk in the park now. 

One of the major bridges in Brisbane

On the way to Cairns, I had the opportunity (or actually; it was impossible not to as there’s no direct connecting service) to stop in Brisbane for a couple days. Although Brisbane is a big city, there’s surprisingly little to do there. The night life is ok, they have a couple nice buildings, but that’s it. However, they dó have a  “city beach”. Basically they juist built a beach in the middle of the city; with palmtrees and sand and everything really. It’s pretty strange to lie on the beach there, being able to see all the big office buildings from far away. That’s also the cool thing about it though, that it’s really in the centre of the city, as otherwise you gotta go quite far before you’re at the actual beach. At this neat little city beach, I even met a high school art teacher who offered to show me around the modern art gallery, which was really nice as it was so spontaneous (and I secretly do kinda like art).

The "City Beach"

Although I’m not overly fond of sitting in the train, it actually isn’t nearly as bad as I expected. On the way I met some really great people; there are even plans for going out in Cairns with a couple people I met in the train for next Friday! What was also really nice that at another part of the trip I sat next to an aboriginal family, and though there was a bit of a language barrier we had a really nice conversation and all had dinner together. These are really the kind of things that make me not regret travelling by train instead of plane, as aside from seeing things, meeting people is for a great part what travelling is all about (for me anyways). 

A fire hose box of the fire department - though not in an art gallery, I thought it was really cool

As for Cairns, where I’m yet to arrive by the way, it’s supposed to be warm and sunny there. Looking at the weather predictions, it sure is warm, but not so much sunny. As a matter of fact, it’s going to be raining with thunderstorms most part of the week. I think I’m just going to consider that “tropical” and try to make the best of it, and hope the evil weathermen are wrong and it’s gonna get better soon.